But all this took a lot of time and effort.

“A lot of my friends are jealous,” Ortiz says. “A lot of my friends come up to me and tell me, ‘You want to trade my phone for a car? Try to get me a Ferrari.’ I tell them it’s not that easy. It takes time and patience, definitely.”

Steven just got his driver’s license and says he’s looking forward to enjoying the results of all that work.”

See the full story at http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/bizarre&id=7564150

Check out the picture…

That being said, a 10% increase is still a good rate of growth…

Two and a half weeks later, my computer is still in the box in my office and the furniture is still collecting a bit of dust in storage. Why? What do these barter sites lack? I’ve been in and around the barter industry since 2000. I’ve completed millions of dollars in barter transactions, for myself and for clients of my barter exchange. I’ve worked directly with hundreds of businesses, helping them trade anything from a couple of gift certificates to deeded land. In my mind, I have plenty of expertise to get a simple direct trade transaction completed.

The internet is supposed to help facilitate those transactions. These websites are meant to be a place where other like minded people go to make their trades. My items, though not iPods or iPhones, are high quality and highly desirable items.

So, what went wrong?

The only answer I have come up with in the last couple of days is that direct trade is hard. It’s hard. Finding someone who has something you want, who wants exactly what you have, is a difficult proposition, internet or no internet. Even when BarterQuest sent me a couple of suggestions, it didn’t help much in finding someone who wanted what I have.

Years ago Big Vine was the web site that attempted to facilitate trades online, but on a barter currency. No direct trading, just barter currency trades. With millions of dollars in funding, it lasted a year or two and then was sold, over and over, until now what is left of those clients resides at ITEX.

My experience with these internet barter websites is not much different. What’s missing? What would make a difference?

Brokers. Trade directors. Customer service representatives. Whatever you want to call them, people on the ground making things happen. Though all of these sites are a valiant attempt at helping people barter what they have for what they want, they do not replace the interaction that must take place for people to make trades happen. People can intuitively and casually extract information from potential clients that will help them to make a connection. Computers just ask for information and to fill fields. And the more fields people have to fill out, the less likely they are to actually complete the form. It doesn’t matter why, the experiment was a failure. I traded nothing. In the end, all of the sites I posted my stuff to did not give me what I wanted: a completed barter transaction.

As more startups appear, I will continue with this exploration. Maybe one day a system will be developed to replace what I think brokers do well. Until then, my suggestion is that you are better off working with a traditional barter exchange.

This is an update to part 2. In part 2 I posted items available for trade on four different websites. One week later, I have this to report:

Craigslist generated no responses aside from the ususal spam and people trying to tell me they want to pay me twice what I am asking, if I’ll just send them my bank account information.

Swaptree generated no responses.

U-Exchange generated one response, an old laptop that I just don’t want.

BarterQuest generated two responses, one for a polaroid camera and the other for an HP Pavillion.

Pay me with a Chicken? Nada.

One week in and none of the services are doing a good job of helping me trade my stuff. More to follow.

High capacity, O negative, well traveled, well maintained, larger than average, only used for @ 22 years! (was in storage before that)

1 available!

History of producing blond haired Caucasian males inclined towards joining the military. (1 army, 1 marine) (results may vary!)

All sales are final!!

Will complete transaction after the game! (and I’ll need a ride to the airport and help on a plane!)

Pictures/documentation available upon request.

No perverts!!!!

Email for additional information!

I don’t know if this is a hoax or real, but the ad is real, and it certainly is a strange trade to offer….

I’ve been meaning to write this piece for a month and a half, but with the Holidays and the year end, I haven’t had the time I’ve wanted to dedicate to this piece. This morning I spent 4 hours going over the five barter sites of the Part 1, Craigslist, BarterQuest, U-Exchange, Pay Me With a Chicken, and SwapTree.

The original experiment had to be modified for part 2. SwapTree only allows bartering of books, music, movies, and games, so the computer and recliner I am trading just don’t work there. Other than that one modification, the experiment continues.

Remember, the object of the game is to post two things I have, accept all reasonable offers, and consumate a trade. Hopefully one of these sites will provide that. Part 2 is all about posting an item to trade.

Craigslist

I started posting with Craigslist. I am a long time Craigslist user, so navigating through the four pages required to post an item was easy. If you have never used Craigslist, you have to login, click a couple of times, write whatever you want about the item including a description or what you want in return, click to add photos, and then authenticate your post with a Captcha box. That’s it, the listing is live. Slick, easy, not pretty, but loads quickly. No one ever accused Craigslist of being pretty.

Craigslist rating: A- : I can’t get over how ugly it is. I don’t like to look at Craigslist, and you had to move through four screens to post something.

Pay Me With A Chicken

To be very honest, I haven’t logged in to PMWAC since I set up the account back in November. I had forgotten my login credentials on every site, PMWAC not being an exception. I went through the process of trying to recover a password, but none of my secret questions would work. I tried different logins, different passwords, different security questions, and none of them worked. I ended up signing up for a new account instead.

The magic is that PMWAC made signing up a breeze. One page to sign up, no intrusive questions like before, and a simple email confirmation had me on my way to posting. Thanks to PMWAC for reading Part 1.

Unfortunately, posting an item to trade still has a glitch. Let me explain…

Clicking Post an Item to Barter takes you to a screen where you enter basic details of the item, including what you are looking for, and then upload a video and a photo. You aren’t REQUIRED to upload a video, but you can. I decided I would try. I brought up iMovie on my mac, put a picture of both the computer and the chair in to two different movies, and recorded basic voice over. I exported the video twice, once with the built in iMovie exporter to .m4v and the other through Quicktime to .mov, which is supposed to be supported by PMWAC.

Unfortunately, neither video would upload. I finally gave up trying to get the video working and posted my items with just a picture. PMWAC sends you an email confirmation, which is probably unnecessary, to confirm that you want to post what you just posted. You have to click a link to make your post live, which I did, but then my posted items never appeared in my account list. At this point, I honestly gave up. I don’t know if my items are live or not. I don’t think they are.

Pay Me with a Chicken: D : The only reason they didn’t get an F is because signing up is way easier. I couldn’t post a video, like the site says, and then my items didn’t automatically go live, and ultimately I still don’t know if they are live on the site or not.

U-Exchange

U-Exchange is one of the five that I was very skeptical about. I remember the sign up being very difficult and lengthy. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the process of posting something to trade was very easy. One page and it is ready. Basic information, very little of it required, so posting is very flexible. Places for four pictures. Very nice.

Additionally, finding what was available in my local area was very easy with regionally based searches.

U-Exchange: A : Easy, fast, non-intrusive. No problems. Immediate gratification. Easier even than Craigslist.

BarterQuest

The first thing that stuck out to me when attempting to log in and post an item to BarterQuest is that they must have a weird password requirement. I couldn’t remember mine, and I use less than a dozen passwords, and none of them worked. Luckily for them, the retrieve password section is very easy and fast, so I did set up a new password, which was inconvenient, but not a deal breaker.

Posting something you want to trade on BarterQuest is a lengthy process, though once you do it a couple of times it becomes more intuitive and fast. First, you select a category, then a subcategory, for what you are posting, then you finally settle on a specific subcategory and fill out the details. Depending on what you are offering, BarterQuest also suggests information. For the computer, it brought up make, model, processor, RAM, etc and made me choose which the computer has, which left me with very little to say about the computer itself. Then after your item is posted, you have to go through another process of adding things that you want in exchange for that item. There is no way to say, “Hey, make me an offer.” You must choose something in exchange. This significantly lengthened the time it took to get my items live. I set up very general categories of what I wanted, and left it at that. After confirming the item, you are taken to a Match page, where the software generates a list of things that may be a match for you based on what you posted that you want and what they asked for. Surprisingly, there were no available items in my local area, Utah. The closest item available is in Arizona. I didn’t spend much time on the list, because of the dearth of locally based items.

Barter Quest: C- : It took waaaaaaaaaaaay too long for me to post something to trade and was a little complicated. That process could be shortened by three pages pretty easily, which would be really nice.

SwapTree

SwapTree won the first round of the battle, and this round, they continued to provide a fantastic service, with only one little hitch. Posting something to SwapTree involved typing a number and clicking twice. That’s it. No providing information, no descriptions, nothing. I think their success in this is limiting what is traded to Books, Music, Movies, and Games. They have a catalog of UPC codes and ISBN #s for books, which is large but incomplete, which controls what you can trade or not. Simply enter the number, and your item pops up. Select the condition and click post and you are finished. Very quick, very easy, and very little time to do it. The downside is that the obscure items I wanted to trade (two of my own band’s CDs from the 1990′s) didn’t appear in their catalog, even though they both have UPC codes. Oh well…when I chose two more mainstream items (Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Night at the Museum DVD) the system worked perfectly.

SwapTree: A+ : Yes, SwapTree couldn’t trade my computer or chair, but for DVD swapping or book trading, the system is magical and quick. No time taken to make something happen. Enter a couple of numbers, click twice, and you are finished. It was my favorite of all the systems.

Part 3 in the upcoming weeks: trying to find someone that wants what I have. I am going to assume that no one is going to contact me from any of my listings and see if I can make a deal happen on my own. Watch for it.

In fact, BizXchange and Craigslist are specifically mentioned in the article:

It’s not a straight trade anymore, because people have come to realize that what one person makes may not be what the other person needs. But someone out there needs it—that’s why barter-exchange companies like BizXchange are springing up to redefine banking with “trade dollars.”

We predict that we’ll all see more of the barter system come into play now that technology can assist with the connections. You see it on everything from Craig’s List to Bright Neighbor. We’ll be trading skill and time for food, and vice versa. Not necessarily one-to-one, but through new networks made possible by technology.

We’ll also see a version of barter during this holiday season, as we exchange our old idea of a retail gift for a homemade dish. That giant red bow you used to see on top of a car? Put it on a casserole dish with the recipe attached. Exchange a little food comfort with your friends—beyond cookies; think homemade soups that you’ve frozen and paired with a loaf of homemade bread. And think a box of tomatoes in exchange for babysitting. It’s a simple idea that starts simply, and that we will embrace like never before.

See the full story at http://foodchannel.com/stories/2163-9-food-trend-for-2010-will-trade-for-food

The items I intend to barter? A leather recliner/rocker with ottoman and a KPC Shuttle computer, new in the box.

For the ads, I will use the exact same wording and pictures on each of the ads so there is no variation and no advantage to any of the platforms. The only exception will be PayMeWithaChicken, which claims that video is the medium for displaying your items for trade.

As part of the test, I am going to be open to any and all suggestions from anyone on any of the sites, but I will only accept deals I want or can move again in some other way.

Let’s start with domain names…

Craigslist.org has been around for years and in my mind is the easiest to remember. If you can’t spell craig, it may be a problem. Craigslist gets an A-, mostly because of the built in recognition and the ease of spelling, but lack of barter in the domain name.

BarterQuest.com is all over the news. It seems like a day doesn’t pass without me finding another article on the web that mentions BarterQuest. That being said, their domain name is easy to remember, and fairly easy to spell. The only alternative spelling I can think of is barterqwest.com, and I imagine that it actually does get typed in to browsers, at least once in a while. That being said, BarterQuest gets an A. Easy to spell, easy to remember.

U-Exchange is almost as media prolific as BarterQuest, but their domain name has a number of problems: many alternative spellings (youexchange,uexchange,youxchange, etc) none of which are owned by U-Exchange. Second, the dash is going to throw some people off. It does make sense in the realm of barter, so I give U-Exchange a B in the domain name category.

PayMeWithaChicken.com is a new site, video based, but the domain name is terrible. It’s fun, it’s funny, but has nothing to do with barter. From a search engine marketing position, they are going to have to work really hard to get on the barter pages…my verdict? I give PayMeWithaChicken.com a C- for the domain name. The only redeeming part of the domain name is that it is funny.

SwapTree.com, a specialty barter site for media, doesn’t have a stellar domain name either. What does a tree have to do with barter? Swap, on the other hand has at least a nod towards barter. My judgement? SwapTree.com gets a B-.

The Winner of Round 1: BarterQuest.com – with a name like barterquest, there is little left to the imagination, and it will hit well on the search engines.

Round Two: Signing Up

Craigslist -The first page, Craigslist.org, isn’t clear about signing up, but as you click Post a Classified, on the next page there is an option for Apply for an Account. Clicking that link takes you to a screen that asks for email address and verification via Captcha. After clicking go, you are taken to a thank you page and a confirmation email is sent immediately. Logging in, you create a password, agree to the terms of use, and you are ready to post your listing. Time from sign up to post: <2 minutes.

BarterQuest -BarterQuest has a clear Register button on the right hand side of the front page. The register page asks for first and last name, username, email and confirmation, password and confirmation, gender, birth year, occupation, and an acceptance of terms and conditions. The password has to be at least 8 characters and one letter and one number, which for me is really annoying. I like the passwords I like, and being forced to make up something else on a site where no money is going to change hands and personal information is not going to be available seems a bit over the top. BarterQuest also wants to send you a newsletter, which I declined. Lastly, they require confirmation via Captcha. After clicking go, you are taken to a thank you page and informed a confirmation email has been sent to your email address. The email came quickly, and clicking the link took me to a login page, which is kind of ambiguous. I don’t know whether I need to just login or if the confirmation is complete. I assume I can now use the service. Within ten minutes I also received a welcome email with some basic instructions on what to do next: posting. Time to posting: <5 minutes.

U-Exchange -My first attempt at signing up with U-Exchange led me to a “Could not connect…” error. I’ll try again later, but this takes points off their grade considerably…ten minutes later the site is still down. This may be the end of U-Exchange. I’ll try again in a couple of hours or tomorrow. For now, the sign up process is not available. Time to posting: ???
Update: Three hours later and U-Exchange is back up. The home page has a nice Sign Up Now button at the top, and a number of Register Here links. The information on the register page that is required for sign up includes first name, last name, organization, telephone 1 and 2, email and verification, agreement to get updates, password and verification, language preferences 1 and 2, full address, web site 1 and 2, title of listing, type of exchange, what I have to offer, and what I’m looking for, along with the requisite agreement to terms and conditions and verification via Captcha. By far, this is the longest sign up form of all of the online barter sites. After filling out the form, you are forced to participate in a survey about where you found them. They have six options, and none of the options is for Internet or Search Engine, so I chose one and commented about the lack of other options. The next page says I can login and post items for trade, so I’m assuming I’m finished signing up. All told, the time to posing: <4 minutes

PayMeWithAChicken -Registering with this site is very clear. A big “Join Us” button greets you on the front page. The next page asks you to select a region: USA/Canada or Outside. After selecting USA, you are taken to a page where you are required to give first and last name, full address, email and confirmation, username, password and confirmation, secret questions and answers, birthday, gender, agreement to terms of use, privacy policy, and idemnity (sic) terms, and then ultimately a Captcha style verification of humanity. That’s a lot of information for a person to person barter site. I forgot to select a country and had to do this step again, and the second time I forgot to retype my password, so the third time was the charm. Then I was taken to a thank you page asking me to check my email. The email did not arrive immediately. Ten minutes later the email had not arrived. Time to posting: ???

SwapTree – SwapTree has a box on the front page that claims you can join in 8 seconds. Indeed, after asking for a username, password, confirmation, and an agreement that I am older than 13, I am permitted to enter the site. A confirmation email was quickly sent, and after clicking the link I was informed that my account was confirmed and asked if I wanted to be taken to the site. SwapTree has been, by far, the most painless of the signups. Quick, efficient, and painless. Time from sign up to post? <1 minute.

Score card for sign up processes:

Craigslist – B – Fairly quick, fairly painless, but you still have to go through 5 screens before you can post an item.

BarterQuest – B- – Almost as fast as Craigslist, but you have to put in too much information and the forced password is just silly.

U-Exchange – B- – U-Exchange has the most invasive of the sign up forms, but they also don’t make you verify via email, which cut down on the time it took to sign up significantly. It’s a B minus because I don’t like being forced to participate in silly surveys that don’t offer enough answers.

PayMeWithAChicken  – D (until I get an email) – If I never get a verification email I’ll never post, and I promise normal users won’t go back and ask for another verification on a barter site.

SwapTree – A – Quick, painless, and as expected. No ambigiuity or confusion. Three pieces of info, a confirmation email, and I am ready to post an item. SwapTree is the CLEAR winner.

Part Two: Posting What I Have and What I Want

In part two of the series I will detail the process of actually posting what I want and what I have to trade. Look for it on Friday.